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EHR is one of the aspects of the Affordable Care Act that revolutionized medical care for veterans two decades ago, says Thomas A. Cappello, director of the North Florida/South Georgia Veterans Health System based in Gainesville, Fla. The integration of electronic records at Shands Jacksonville with the data of Shands patients at the University of Florida has enabled physicians to easily view the care given to patients at both facilities.

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Recent EHR data from University of Florida Health Shands Hospital in Gainesville showed 47% of deceased patients had an advance directive, an increase from the 6%-8% who had them in 2013, said UF Health Shands HomeCare Executive Director Anthony Clarizio. He said the goal is to reach 94% and the hospital has created best-practice alerts in its EHR system to show whether a patient has an advance directive.

Veterans hospitals under construction in Denver, Las Vegas, New Orleans and Orlando, Fla., are riddled with errors and cost overruns, according to a Government Accountability Office investigation, and House Veterans' Affairs Committee members were scheduled to discuss the issue today. Critics say the Department of Veterans Affairs should not be managing building projects.

ClearDATA Networks, a Phoenix-based health care cloud computing services marketer, announced it has received financial backing from the partners of Norwest Venture and other angel investors. The funding will expand the products ClearDATA offers in the health IT industry, the company said.

The nonprofit Rhode Island Quality Institute is getting $600,000 from the Center for Integrated Health Solutions to manage the electronic sharing of patient information between general and behavioral health communities through the state's health information exchange system, called currentcare. "Giving behavioral health providers access to their patients' physical health data and collecting and sharing behavioral health data through currentcare has always been part of the roadmap for Rhode Island's HIE," RIQI CIO and COO Gary Christensen said in a statement.

Shands Healthcare in Gainesville, Fla., purchased a $56,000 pediatric critical care ambulance to be used solely for transporting critically ill and premature infants to the hospital. The ambulance is stocked with everything nurses need to treat at-risk neonates, including incubators, smaller doses of medications and pediatric supplies.